Over the winter months, I usually do plenty of mulching of garden beds. What I have found today is that there is a fair amount of plastic bits and stones within the mulch that has been brought in from outside my place of work. I find this a really bad thing as there doesn’t seem to be any quality control in their product.

Somewhere along the line, this plastic has appeared from somewhere. Was it there before the wood got chipped into mulch? It seems like it did as it is all small pieces, but that doesn’t explain the stones I found. How did they get in there as they were not from my place of work where the mulch was left?

The quality control is rather poor on this, I have to say. It isn’t the first time that I have found plastic in products like this. Last month, I was doing some mulching at my previous workplace and again found some plastic in that too.

It is one of those things that really annoys me because there should never be any waste in mulch products that anyone purchases-you are purchasing this type of product to make your garden look good, not to have it strewn with rubbish! It is also one of those things that shouldn’t happen-it does, but the how to prevent it is a big question that I can’t really answer for a large set of gardens that don’t have the facilities to have their own large-scale mulch or compost production areas of their own.

I would love to have this sort of set up where I work, but the schools I have worked at (or currently work at) either don’t have the space or don’t see the value in the idea. Where the larger schools I have worked have an advantage is that when a tree needs to be cut down for safety reasons, they do get the tree chipped and kept onsite for mulch, but these schools still bring in finer mulch for high profile areas (so not always solving the rubbish situation).

So, after my rant on rubbish in the mulch I’ll end on a more cheery note. I have included some camellias and roses, all of which are looking great.